When he spies a wide-brimmed red hat on a park bench, Henry wants to keep it. Successive illustrations depict Hat’s imagined uses, ranging from the practical (protection from sun and rain) to the fantastic (a wedge in a crocodile’s mouth, a prop in a stage show that makes Henry a star). Mom asks, “But Henry, what if someone else needs this hat?” Her question prompts her son to imagine his scenarios in reverse—mirrored depictions, but this time, with other unfortunates suffering the consequences of Hat’s absence. An African explorer (who’s fairly far along in that croc’s digestive process), a magician producing a stinky fish skeleton from a trashcan, a sunburned lifeguard and more—this conjured cast induces Henry to leave Hat behind. Hoppe’s watercolor-and-ink pictures invoke such early-reader illustrators as Roy McKie and Lynn Sweat, and the small trim, short sentences and three-color palette (featuring a gorgeous Caps for Sale blue) underscore the retro reader-vibe. A funny, appealing choice for beginning readers, especially boys. (Early reader. 4-6)
Pub Date: April 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59990-247-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Even more alliterative hanky-panky from the creators of The Wonky Donkey (2010).
Operating on the principle (valid, here) that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, Smith and Cowley give their wildly popular Wonky Donkey a daughter—who, being “cute and small,” was a “dinky donkey”; having “beautiful long eyelashes” she was in consequence a “blinky dinky donkey”; and so on…and on…and on until the cumulative chorus sails past silly and ludicrous to irresistibly hysterical: “She was a stinky funky plinky-plonky winky-tinky,” etc. The repeating “Hee Haw!” chorus hardly suggests what any audience’s escalating response will be. In the illustrations the daughter sports her parent’s big, shiny eyes and winsome grin while posing in a multicolored mohawk next to a rustic boombox (“She was a punky blinky”), painting her hooves pink, crossing her rear legs to signal a need to pee (“winky-tinky inky-pinky”), demonstrating her smelliness with the help of a histrionic hummingbird, and finally cozying up to her proud, evidently single parent (there’s no sign of another) for a closing cuddle.
Should be packaged with an oxygen supply, as it will incontestably elicit uncontrollable gales of giggles. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-60083-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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